On the Nature of the Universe (Oxford World’s Classics) (60 page)

689
Many letters common to many words
: see above on 1. 823 ff.

708
fixed seeds
cf. 1. 189 ff.

730–1022
Now here’s a matter…
: primary and secondary properties. Lucretius had objected to the rival philosophers in
Book 1
that to endow primary substance with properties such as heat would make it impossible to account for the varied nature of the phenomenal world (cf. 1. 645 ff., 880 ff., 915 ff.), and here he emphasizes that his atoms do not possess colour (730–841) or other properties such as heat, sound, moisture, or smell (842–64), and in particular are in no way sentient or conscious (865–1022, preparing for the argument against the immortality of the soul in
Book 3
). Epicurus had dealt with secondary properties in
Letter to Herodotus
68–9, in connection with the discussion of properties and accidents (see above 1. 449 ff.): Lucretius’ position reflects the overall plot of
On the Nature of the Universe
(see above on 2. 344 ff.), and in particular the attention given to the lack of sentience amongst the atoms as leading up to
Book 3
. From the time of the first atomists, policing the boundary between the properties of the phenomenal world and those of its ‘underlying’ reality has been a perennial concern of science and philosophy: cf. Democritus fr. B9, B11, and e.g. John Locke,
An Essay concerning Human Understanding
2. 7. 9 ff., 4. 3. 11 ff.

748 ff. At least one line has been lost here, and there may be further disruption to the text.

753
fixed boundaries
: see above on 1. 670.

867–8
Nor do things plainly known to us | And manifest refute this
: Lucretius’ metaphors here reflect Epicurus’ use of terms like
antimarturesis
‘witnessing against’ (e.g.
Letter to Herodotus
47) and
machesthai
‘fight against’ (e.g.
Letter to Pythocles
90) for the relation between visible phenomena and hypothesized underlying reality, but also the etymology of Roman words such as
manufestus
‘manifest’, which was originally used of things that can be grasped with the hand (
manus
in Latin).

871–3
living worms emerge
: cf. 3. 719. Belief in the spontaneous generation of organisms from rotting matter was almost universal until the development of microscopy: Louis Pasteur had a fierce debate on the subject with the biologists Pouchet and Bastion which was not resolved until the late nineteenth century.

944–62
Consider this also…
: the examples look forward to the proofs of mortality in
Book 3
(459 ff., 592 ff.).

976
shake their sides and rock with laughter
: repeated from 1. 919–20.

991
we are all sprung from heavenly seed
: a second appropriation of the
hieros gamos
or ‘holy wedding’ of earth and sky (see above 1. 250 ff.), this time based on a philosophizing passage of Euripides’ lost play
Chrysippus
(fr. 839).

1013–18
Moreover in my verse…
: see above on 1. 824.

1023
A new thing now
: the Epicurean doctrine of an infinite number of worlds (cf.
Letter to Herodotus
45,
Letter to Pythocles
88 ff.) followed from their belief in the infinity of the universe and of matter and played an important part in their doctrines on possibility and necessity: if anything is possible, there is a world in which it is actual (see below on 5. 528). Lucretius also draws out the antiprovidential implications (1090 ff.). By contrast, most other schools posited a single world-system.

1030–9
Take first the bright pure azure of the sky…
: Lucretius here perverts to his own ends a theist argument used by Aristotle in his lost dialogue
On Philosophy
(fr. 12, Cicero,
On the Nature of the Gods
2. 37): if people living underground suddenly saw the sky for the first time, they would believe it the work of god.

1101
Oft shatter his own temples
: see below on 6. 417.

1105
Since the first natal hour of the world
: 1077–89 had introduced the idea that worlds are born and die, and 1090–1104 had then in a sense concluded the section on the infinite number of worlds, highlighting the problems the notion poses for a belief in divine providence. The book concludes by returning to the birth, growth, acme, decay, and death of worlds, in relation to the specific example of our world-system. The model is that of human growth and decay, and the passage also therefore again leads into the discussion of human mortality in
Book 3
. Plato in the
Timaeus
(33a, 81b, etc.) had rejected the implications of the biological analogy (especially in relation
to matter coming in from outside) for the mortality of the world-system, presumably in opposition to the use of it by Democritus (cf. fr. A40): Lucretius’ employment reflects elements of Plato’s attack as well as atomist tradition.

1107
added | In multitudes from outside
: Epicurus (
Letter to Pythocles
89) talks of ‘irrigations’ of the world by atoms from outside. See below on 6. 483 ff.

1153
No golden chain
: Zeus in Homer,
Iliad
8. 19, says that he could not be pulled down from heaven even if all the gods pulled on a golden chain. This was allegorized in various ways by philosophers and commentators, though there is no close parallel to Lucretius’ interpretation, which has more the air of parody.

1173
all things… |… are moving towards their end
: the ‘pessimistic’ end to the book is paralleled by those to
Books 3
,
4
, and
6
, whereas 1 and 5 end more ‘optimistically’: in each case there is a reference to movement and change which is both closural and potentially suggestive of continuance. At the opening of
Book 3
Epicurus will bring light into this darkness.

1–30
You, who from so great darkness could uplift | So clear a light…
:
Book 3
begins with a ‘hymn to Epicurus’ which recalls the opening hymn to Venus: hence e.g. the repeated second-person address typical of hymns (cf. 9 ff.). There is a similar dispersal of darkness (cf. 1. 6 ff., 3. 16 ff.) and opening up of the world to joy and light, and Epicurus reveals the life of the gods in terms which recall 1. 44 ff. in the prologue to
Book 1
; he is the father (9 ff.) where she was the mother of things (1. 1 ff.).

3
glory of the Greeks
: Epicurus is again referred to with an honorific periphrasis: cf. above on 1. 67 ff. ‘man of Greece’, and compare Venus’ address as ‘delight of men and gods’ in 1. 1 ff.

4
footprints
: see above on 1. 402 and 926 ff. Lucretius follows up the tracks of Epicurus, which are also the tracks through the wilderness which lead us to the truth.

14–15
Starts to proclaim the nature of the world
: Epicurus’ proclamation is phrased in terms which recall again the Eleusinian mysteries, at the climactic point of which the initiate was brought into a room filled with light and received a mystic announcement by the priest of the birth of a child and revelation of happiness after death (cf. e.g. Plutarch,
On the Soul
fr. 178, and, for the shout of the priest, Hippolytus,
Refutation of all Heresies
5. 8. 40). Lucretius’ revelation, on the other hand, is that there is no afterlife, and felicity must be sought and found in this world. Epicurus himself was said to have been initiated into the mysteries according to Lucretius’ contemporary Philodemus (
On Piety
20. 554 ff.).

16
The walls of heaven open
: see above on 1. 1101 ff. In the mysteries, a shrine was opened at the moment of revelation (cf. Plutarch,
On Progress in Virtue
81e).

18–22
The gods appear now and their quiet abodes
: Lucretius translates a celebrated description of life on Mt Olympus in Homer,
Odyssey
6. 42–6, appending to it another version of the first of Epicurus’
Master Sayings
(23 ff., cf. 1. 44 ff.). The easy and tranquil life of the Homeric gods is not only a model for that of the Epicurean gods, but also provides an example of how the individual Epicurean can and should live. The ‘appearance’ of the gods resembles a divine epiphany; they are not, however—and cannot be—physically present, but are perceptible only through contemplation. See below on 5. 148 ff.

28–9
delight and joy |… and awe
: Lucretius reacts like an initiate before the revelation of nature’s mysteries, or like someone receiving a divine epiphany (cf. the Annunciation: Luke 1: 28 ff.). But there is a sense in which what he sees is nothing: nature ‘open and in every part displayed’ is no more than atoms moving endlessly in infinite void. The secret of the universe is that there is no secret.

39
suffusing all | With the blackness of death
: Lucretius’ image for the soul, as a pool of water which is clear so long as the bottom is not stirred, but which for true salvation has to be cleaned out (cf. 4. 1133 ff.), anticipates Freudian views, although the precise nature of the ‘unconscious’ in Epicureanism is disputed, and in theory the cleansing of the soul for the Epicureans comes about through wholly rational means and leads to the complete elimination of the unconscious drive that is the fear of death.

41–93
For when men say…
: Lucretius has two arguments against those who would say that there is no need to tackle the fear of death, as most people are not possessed of its terror (an accusation made by Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations
1. 48). First, while this may be true in normal circumstances, any hardship shows that the fear has been there all the time (41–58), and, second, even in normal circumstances, the fear is operative as a root cause of human unhappiness (59–93).

43–4
blood |… or even wind
: similar views were held by early philosophers (cf. Empedocles fr. B105 for blood, Anaximenes fr. A23 and Diogenes of Apollonia fr. A20 for air), but here are representatives of the careless imprecision of those who believe that they do not need Epicurean truth. The third-century
BC
Epicurean Polystratus (third head of the school) has a similar attack on those who think that they can do without scientific reason in his treatise
Against those who irrationally despise popular beliefs
.

48
These men in exile
: a member of the Roman élite accused or condemned on a serious charge might go into exile to escape punishment, as, for instance, Memmius later did when prosecuted for electoral corruption in 52
BC
(see Introduction).

52
they slay black cattle
: black animals were sacrificed to underworld gods.

67
lingering | Before the gates of death
: death is figured as a Roman man of power, on whom the living attend like dependent clients.

71
murder upon murder | Piling in greed
: the reference is especially to the literal murders of the ‘proscriptions’ under Sulla in 82–1
BC
, but the day-to-day political strife of the late republic was also often expressed in hyperbolically violent terms.

73
A kinsman’s board supplies both hate and fear
: there is an implied mythological model, that of Atreus serving up the children of his brother Thyestes: in the
Atreus
of Accius (170–86
BC
) Atreus uttered the famous lines ‘let them hate, so long as they fear’ (frr. 203–4).

78
Some die to get a statue and a name
: the desire for statues is listed amongst those desires which were neither necessary nor natural by an ancient commentator on Epicurus,
Master Sayings
29 (see Introduction).

87–93
For we, like children frightened of the dark…
: see above on 2. 55.

94–1094
First I say
: 94–416 expound the nature of the soul, 417–829 argue for its mortality, and 830–1094 attack the fear of death directly.

99–100
A sort of vital essence of the body, | Called harmony by the Greeks
: the view that consciousness is not located in a part of the body but is a state of the whole is espoused by Simmias and Echecrates (fifth–fourth century
BC
) in Plato’s
Phaedo
(85e, 88d) and later by the Aristotelian philosophers Dicaearchus (fourth century
BC
, frr. 5–12) and Aristoxenus (fourth century
BC
, frr. 118–21). The latter is especially significant here as an important theorist of music (cf. Cicero,
Tusculan Disputations
1. 19, 41). Another thinker who may have held similar views was the first-century
BC
medical philosopher Asclepiades of Bithynia, sometimes linked to Dicaearchus (Tertullian (second–third century
AD
),
On the Soul
15. 3, who also mentions the third-century
BC
doctor Andreas) and active in Rome for part of his life. The ‘harmony’ or attunement theory was criticized in the
Phaedo
and by Aristotle in his lost dialogue
Eudemus
(fr. 7, cf.
On the Soul
1. 4. 407
^b
27 ff.): Epicurus is said by John Philoponus (sixth century
AD
) in his commentary on this last passage to have criticized Plato’s arguments, but we do not know the context.

134
gave | The name to something till then nameless
: Lucretius suggests the technical language of rhetoric and the definition of
katachresis
, or ‘necessary’ metaphor.

136
mind and spirit
: in the Latin, two words from the same root,
animus
‘mind’ and
anima
‘soul’, ‘spirit’: Lucretius exploits an existing distinction in the language where Epicurus had referred rather to the reasoning and non-rational parts of the souls (cf. the ‘scholion’ or ancient comment on
Letter to Herodotus
67 preserved with the text).